Sri Lanka’s dangerous silence

The conflict is over – now the international community must make sure Tamils get the help they desperately need

Many people are in the camps not because they have no other place to go… They are in the camps because the government does not allow them to leave.

Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch

The Paris-based non-governmental organisation Action Contre la Faim (ACF) last week accused the Sri Lankan government’s presidential commission of inquiry of failing to identify the people responsible for the killing of 17 aid workers in August 2006, calling it one of the "most serious crimes ever committed against an NGO" and reiterating its calls to the European Union for an "internationalised inquiry into this massacre".

The government of Sri Lanka continues its farce on the world media stage, parading the five detained Tamil doctors who retracted statements they made on the number of civilian causalities during the final stages of the conflict and prompting calls by Amnesty International for an "independent inquiry" into war crimes. Despite the renunciation by the doctors, who remain in custody and apparently under duress, the UN, aid workers and an investigation by the Times have corroborated the true extent of civilian casualties during the final onslaught.

Two months have passed since the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), yet civilian deaths in the internment camps continue at an unacceptable level. The Times reported only last week that the Tamil death toll is "1,400 a week" at Manik Farm camp alone. One may contradict the numbers – be it 1,400 or 14 – but any number of deaths in government-run "welfare camps" are too many.

A Government Medical Officers Association spokesperson announced last week that the doctors working in these internment camps have complained of inadequate medical facilities, where 300,000 detainees are being served by just 50 doctors, and appealed to the president for more medical officers.

While the fatalities continue at high levels in these camps, the Sri Lankan government, strangely, has ordered the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to scale down its operations. The ICRC, as a result, has started withdrawing its expatriate staff from the north-east, with the closure of its offices in the area. This brings back ominous memories to civilians and the Tamil diaspora of when the Sri Lankan government ordered all international NGOs and independent media out of the north-east back in September 2008 in preparation for its "war without witnesses".

If the conditions in these camps are dire, the situation is not much better for Tamil civilians elsewhere in the north or east. The Jaffna peninsula boasts a civilian to military ratio of 1:10. This is oppression unmatched by any brutal military regimes in the world.

Sri Lanka’s regime has continued its belligerence in the face of calls by the international community, and international and local media, for improvement in its human rights record. Despite recent calls by the International Press Freedom Mission to Sri Lanka, deteriorating press freedom continues post-conflict with incessant harassment of local media – Tamil daily Uthayan, and Sinhala website Lanka News, being the latest victims.

The Sri Lankan government continues to harass any descending voices. Sri Lanka’s ministry of defence website branded five lawyers as "traitors", accusing them of defending LTTE suspects, perhaps with a view to provoke harm to them by vigilante groups. Earlier this month, Lord Goodhart, head of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, expressed serious concern over the threats to the justice system, stating "naming individual lawyers representing terrorist suspects is wholly irresponsible and leaves them open to an increased risk of attack".

The government, even in the face of global recession and end to armed hostilities, has announced a 17% increase in its military spending for the forthcoming year. It has also announced recruitment of a further 50,000 armed personnel after the conclusion of armed conflict. In addition, the government has announced appointments of military chiefs complicit in war crimes to various diplomatic missions in Europe and elsewhere. The EU should follow the precedence set by Canada in 2005 when it stated that, "if there are any allegations of human rights abuses whether proved or not, would be regarded as an inadmissible person to that country", in rejecting the appointment of such a person from Sri Lanka.

Tamils expect and demand the international community to take action to bring Sri Lankan state to uphold their human rights and investigate war crimes committed by military personnel.

Before the end of the conflict the international community insisted on the evacuation of civilians to the military-controlled areas, but failed to ensure that the Sri Lankan government had the infrastructure, facilities and the political will to look after these evacuees. Having orchestrated the international community’s call for evacuation, the Sri Lankan government now rejects calls for access and fair treatment of these evacuees interned in camps.

The time has come for the international community to use all levers, including deferral of the GSP+ trade scheme and IMF loan, or through imposing economic sanctions and an arms embargo. There are precedents in the cases of Belarus and Zimbabwe where political motivations were clearly behind the economic rationale given. Funding a record military expenditure, a gigantic cabinet of nearly 100 ministers, closing down of a government-subsidised private airline, Mihin Air, with millions of rupees wasted, highly publicised corruption scandals and general financial mismanagement will send the wrong signal to other such corrupt regimes around the world.